Alcohol
[Purveyors of booze, since man realised this is all there is]
Rating: 8.6

As genres of self-abasement grow ever more diverse depending on the social circles you hang in (seriously – if you party with meth-whores, you’re a meth-whore), it’s worth bearing in mind that there are great levellers in the intoxicantosphere that unite arthritic b-boys, harassed middle-aged middle-managers and bladed-up tweens alike, and none more so than sweet, sweet liquor. You know what? Keep your cocaine – it’s expensive, cut to shit with baby laxatives and makes you jabber like a Miyazaki voice-over artist. Keep your weed – it’s stinky, it makes your eyes red, and it makes… whoa, when did I start using the Oxford Comma? You know, that third comma before the last ‘and’. Was it since Vampire Weekend started banging on about it? And how come they call it the Oxford Comma when we all know it’s the Harvard Comma? Is that another pretentious Anglophile thing, like when Pavement didn’t call themselves Sidewalk? And what are Vampire Weekend doing name-checking Lil’ Jon? What the fuck is happening here?
Anyhoo, screw marijuana. Makes you lose your train of thought. And paranoid. And tedious. So what are we left with? Crack (nope), smack (nope), acid (double-nope)… Yep, you really have no other choice – it’s the demon drink. And what a curvaceous, lip-smacking, bubble-butted demon it is. No other mood-altering substance out there accentuates the highs, helps you out with the lows, levels out the middles, and thoroughly humps with your shit like booze. It’s, like, why do we worship Gods and Buddhas and prophets when there’s something sitting on your shelf at home that can make you a) way more spiritual, b) concurrently way more attractive and attractable, and 3) shuts you down like Alt-Apple-Escape when you need to be silenced. Here are some examples as to why it’s so freakin’ great:

1: You’re lonely.
Okay, so you’re sitting at home with a deficit of buddies and/or sexual liaisons. What do you do? Well, you don’t lovingly prepare a quiche, tune into Big Brother Germany on satellite, and slowly sup a Coke float, do you? Fuck no. If life’s racing past you and not offering you a lift, you get out there, get the swankiest bottle of bourbon your piss-weak job affords you, and you tank up. Why? Here’s why: so you can get truly loaded, get online, message ex-girlfriends, leave abusive Facebook wall-posts on one-time drinking pals’ profiles, rediscover your love of gonzo/horror/snuff movies on eBay/Amazon, max out whatever credit you have left, and laugh yourself silly at whatever stupid noise your mouth decides to make. All night. No-one to stop you, remember? You’re lonely.

2. You hate your life
Again, stupid noises become hilarious, you can fall around and toast dead relatives you kinda wish you’d gotten to know after all, and you can block out all the moaning/recriminations from any nearby spouses/well-wishers/employees without a care as to what they think of you. It’s like my dad always said, “Son, when you’ve got nothing left to lose, it’s time to really let loose with the fuck yous.”

3. You like being dizzy
See how much you can drink before the room does that spinny thing and you have to shut your eyes but that doesn’t work cos it’s still spinning behind your eyes and you realise it wasn’t the room that was spinning after all it was your eyes but the thing is when you open them again it still looks like the room is spinning and now all the people are spinning in it too so you look at your hands and would you look at that those fuckers are spinning now and it’s like whooaaa the whole world is spinning which I guess is kinda the truth cos it really is spinning you know and sometimes I can see it spin man you know sometimes when I look up and I know I shouldn’t be able to see this but I can and I can see the world spinning but WWWHHHRRHHHOOOAOARGH!

Yeah, there’s one downside to alcohol, which is why it doesn’t get the highest ever Bitchfork score of 8.9, and that is the dumb ol’ way we’ve somehow evolved into being utterly poisoned by it. I guess that’s to stop us pouring it on our Bran Flakes, or going to bed wearing one of those plastic baseball caps that hold two cans of beer (or a vodka and mixer if you’re dainty). It’s probably for the best, but it is pretty annoying for those of us who can’t face a sunrise, sunset or afternoon without applying ethanol to our blood. Ah well, you do your best. Whaddya want? I’m buying…

Rat Banjos, June 10th, 2008

Tha Alkaholiks – Only When I’m Drunk